Rock me mama anyway you feel
Hey mama rock me
Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a south-bound train
Hey mama rock me
-"Wagon Wheel," Bob Dylan; Old Crow Medicine Show
The border, la frontera, is death. Again and again when I was in Nogales I heard this expressed by people who call the border home, people whose existence is this increasingly militarized space. Again and again, I saw white crosses, x's that marked the spot, signifying the death in the desert along that line drawn in pencil by men far, far away.
There is a dusty fear here. As a member of the OnFireBorderlinks delegation in October 2009, we traveled from Tucson to Nogales to Altar and back. These memories hit me this week as I sat in front of a computer working at Faith in Public Life when I came across this article by Elliot Spagat from the Associated Press:
ALTAR, Sonora- Very few residents dare to drive on one of the roads out of this watering hole for migrants, fearing they will be stopped at gunpoint. They worry they will be told to turn around after their gas tanks are drained or, worse, be kidnapped or killed.
A shootout that left 21 people dead and six wounded on the road last week is the most gruesome sign that a relatively tranquil pocket of northern Mexico quickly is turning into a hotbed of drug-fueled violence on Arizona's doorstep...
Nogales, the main city in the region, which shares a border with the Arizona city of the same name, has had 131 murders so far this year, nearly surpassing 135 for all of 2009, according to a tally by the newspaper Diario de Sonora. That includes two heads found Thursday stuffed side-by-side between the bars of a cemetery fence.
The carnage still pales compared with other Mexican border cities, most notably Juarez, which lies across from El Paso, which had 2,600 murders last year. But the increase shows that some small cattle-grazing towns near Nogales are in the grip of drug traffickers who terrorize residents...
"If no one puts a stop to this, these will become ghost towns," said Jose Martin Mayoral, editor of Diario del Desierto, the newspaper in Caborca....
That phrase ghost towns echoes in my mind as I sit here, so far from this fear on the border yet still so affected by it. When I sat down to write this post, I thought about what it was like to sit in a van in Altar looking out into the desert at the road people took to get to the U.S.A. without documents. We couldn't get out of the van because the entrance to the road was patrolled by gangs. I wanted to write about NAFTA and the failed war on drugs, corruption and USAmerican citizens' own complicity with the violence that is migrating over this border in the way people are forced into drug and human trafficking. I wanted to compare the low levels of violent crime in USAmerican Border cities with the fact that Ciudad Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas, is one of the most violent cities in the world.
Yet as I read this Associated Press article and think about what Altar and Nogales meant to me and why I am so saddened to read about the violence on the border, the image that keeps coming into my head is that of José, an eighteen year old who looked so much younger who came to the migrant shelter in Altar the night we were there. He was alone. I didn't get much of his story and don't know if any one of us did, but what I remember about José was the quiet way he sang along to the music as my friend David played guitar in the courtyard to the shelter. We sang song after song as the sun set and the coolness of the desert at night set in around us.
The sacred to me was in the movement of José's lips as we sang "Wagon Wheel" until the haunting beauty of the song dissipated in the darkness and we entered the shelter to eat.
As I continue to sit in front of a computer, I meditate on the movement of God in that moment and I just wish I could give it to you, the way the night air felt against my skin, the sound of Susanna's voice as she led us all in the song, the weight of it all. Would it change you, would it make you ask more questions, make you stop and think when you read about the increased violence of border cities on the Mexican side of the border?
"Wagon Wheel" is a song about traveling south, about getting to Raleigh to be with a lover, where if he died in Raleigh, he says "at least I will die free." I don't know if José ever made it north, but if he did, he only had a few months before SB1070 reminded the rest of us how undocumented people living in this country are not free, continuing to live in prisons of fear from a different violence. José reminds me why we need comprehensive immigration reform so badly, why I pray he is neither living in the border cities in Mexico nor in Arizona but that he has a chance to live free of that fear. That we all have the chance to live free of that fear.
The most recent issue of UMConnection, the newspaper of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, has a great article about United Methodist participation in the immigration reform rally, including quotes from UMOnFire staff Jen Mihok, a reference to our BorderLinks trip, and a front page photo of OnFire members. Check it out:
United Methodists call for immigration reform
BY JOHN W. COLEMAN SPECIAL TO THE UMCONNECTION
Baltimore-Washington Conference churches were represented among the tens of thousands of marchers who gathered in the nation’s capital March 21 to call for improvements in U.S. immigration laws.
“The time for comprehensive immigration reform is now,” proclaimed United Methodist Bishop Minerva Carcaño of Phoenix, Ariz., leader of the Desert-Southwest Conference.
She joined a diverse procession of speakers representing religious bodies, advocacy organizations, labor unions and other groups. They urged Congress and President Barack Obama to move the issue to the top of the legislation agenda.
Churches from Washington, D.C., to Frederick, Baltimore, Hyattsville, Oxon Hill and other areas of the conference joined the colorful, enthusiastic, noisy throng of marchers, many of them shouting “Si, se puede” in Spanish and “Yes, we can” in English. Parading with signs, banners, baby strollers and even marching bands, they filled nearly five blocks on the national mall near the U.S. Capitol.
“This country says to you, ‘Harvest our fields, build our homes, take care of our children, serve our tables, clean up after us and then be gone,’” Carcaño told listeners.
She and other speakers called for humane, viable policies and procedures that would allow about 11 million immigrants now in the U.S. illegally to attain legal status and to work and live with their families, safe from intimidation, arrest and deportation.
Carcaño, who chairs two of the denomination’s immigration task forces, called current laws and enforcement “a shameful state of affairs for a country that prides itself on providing justice for all.”
Hundreds of United Methodists were seen gathered and scattered among the crowd with identifying shirts and signs. They came via trains, cars and buses, some from across our region, others from across the nation, many riding all night to be a part of history.
“We have voices and power, and we are here to say we want this to be a fair and just system that treats people with dignity and respect,” said David Hosey, who attends Dumbarton UMC in Washington. He is a mission intern with the General Board of Global Ministries.
Part of the church’s active young adult group, he and others visited both sides of the border in Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Mexico, last October. They met with Mexican migrant workers and high school students through the BorderLinks program. “We saw the economic disparities and pressures they suffer,” he said. “They’re looking for opportunities, jobs and hope for their families.”
Jennifer Mihok, a member of Woodside UMC in Silver Spring and a mission intern at the Methodist Federation for Social Action, coordinated the trip. “I’m here because I don’t need to be in the shadows when so many others have to be,” she said.
“This was an amazing experience and a strong statement for our country to address the need for comprehensive immigration reform” said the Rev. Edgardo Rivera, who coordinates Hispanic/Latino Ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. “Offering a path to citizenship for undocumented people and protecting them from harm and exploitation is an issue of justice and hospitality. I’m pleased to see our church represented here.”
Valerie Hames, of First UMC Hyattsville, worked with others across the conference since December to promote the march and organize buses to bring in church members. “But when I finally saw all the people gathered there at the march, I was overwhelmed,” she said. “The energy there was great, and hearing victims of enforcement and broken families speak their pain — especially one little boy — really resonated with a lot of people and opened their eyes and hearts to this problem.”
Hames, who came here from Sierra Leone 20 years ago, endured her struggles with the inefficient, expensive immigration legal system before finally receiving her green card just this year.
She is a volunteer in the Justice for Our Neighbors (JFON) immigration legal assistance ministry at First Church Hyattsville, and she chairs the conference’s oversight committee for the program which operates in three locations.
“I brought JFON volunteers to the march for them to see how important this ministry is to people’s lives,” she said. “And I felt stronger about my own involvement in JFON when I left there.”
"For Christ is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in Christ's flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create one new person out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through Christ we both have access to the Father by one Spirit." -- Ephesians 2: 14-18
I have a vendetta against walls.
For some reason, it has taken me months to write this. Sentences and phrases have been floating in my brain that whole time, surfacing occasionally to disturb the waters. Sometimes it takes an outside push, a rock dropped in the pond.
The other day a friend asked me, “What did you think when you went to Mexico and saw the Wall?” It wasn’t just a casual question. She knew that it wasn’t my first experience with a wall built to divide.
(Me at the Wall in Abu Dis) I lived in Jerusalem from September 2007-December 2008. If the early church considered Jerusalem to be the center of the world, I wonder what they would think of the city today, divided as it is by a massive concrete wall, some 25 feet high, studded with watchtowers and barbed wire and defiant graffiti, broken in places by checkpoints that serve as choke points on the movement and access of Palestinian civilians. In urban areas, the wall is twice as high as the Berlin Wall, and its total length stretches four times as long. Its route snakes deep in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. More than 75% of its projected route is inside the West Bank, rather than on the internationally recognized border between Israel and the hoped-for Palestinian state.
(The Wall at Qalandia Checkpoint, between Jerusalem and Ramallah)
(A map of the route of the Wall in the West Bank)
The Wall divides not only Israelis from Palestinians—a problematic enough separation if there is ever to be peace in the land that is called Holy—but Palestinians from Palestinians. In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis, close to where I lived, it runs right up the center of the street, cutting Palestinians off from family, work places, places of worship, schools, and clinics that used to be just across the way. In villages like Bil'in, Jayyous, and Ni'lin, it cuts Palestinian farmers off from land and water resources that they have had access to for hundreds of years. A July 9, 2004 advisory ruling from the International Court of Justice declared the route of the Wall to be illegal under international humanitarian and human rights law. Palestinian communities, with the solidarity of Israeli and international human rights defenders, have worked and marched and demonstrated and struggled against the construction of the Wall. 19 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army during protests against the Wall. The youngest of these, Ahmed Husan Youssef Mousa, was only 10 years old. Hundreds more protestors, Israelis, Palestinians, and internationals, have been wounded. One U.S. citizen, Tristan Anderson, was shot in the face with a high velocity tear gas canister and remains hospitalized with brain damage almost a year later. If he had been Palestinian, he likely would have died—prevented from reaching necessary care because of restrictions on Palestinian movement.
(Unarmed protesters against the Wall in the village of Bil'in are violently dispersed by the Israeli military. Photo by ActiveStills, an Israeli organization)
So when our OnFire/BorderLinks group got to the border crossing in Nogales, and got our first sight of the U.S./Mexico Border Wall, it seemed an oddly familiar sight. Nogales used to be one community, straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. Now it is cut in two—separated, divided by that ugly wall.
(Photos of the Wall in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. The crosses memorialize those who have died making the border crossing)
It sounds strange to say, but compared to the massive Apartheid Wall in Jerusalem (the Hebrew word for the wall, “Hafrada,” means separation—just like the term “Apartheid” in Afrikaans) the U.S./Mexico border wall looks a bit…dinky. Constructed largely out of scrap metal from the United States’ first foray into invading Iraq, the Wall left me with the impression that, given enough momentum, enough people, we could just push it down.
But it’s no less solid, no less insurmountable for those with the wrong passport, than any other wall that’s ever been built between people with economic resources and hands on the machinery of global power and those without. It’s no less environmentally catastrophic, interfering not only with human migration but with animal migration routes that are threatened with permanent disruption. It's no less symbolic of separation and exploitation, of our inability to live into the vision of Beloved Community offered to us by so many prophets over so many thousands of years. Our own home grown Separation Barrier is an ugly, rust colored reminder of our failure of imagination when it comes to our relationship with our neighbors to the South.
Walls across the world are remarkably, banally, similar. Walls that are built to divide are almost always built between populations “with” and populations “without.” Walls that are built to divide are never constructed by communities coming together—the only walls built in that way are shelter walls, walls of houses and community centers and places worship and education. Walls built to divide are built by governments, by corporations, by power brokers—not by grassroots communities. Not by love.
The Walls in Palestine and the U.S./Mexico Border have more in common than symbolism, though. Both are being built, in one way or another, by U.S. taxpayer dollars. The West Bank Wall is subsidized and made possible by the more than $3 billion in military aid that we pour into Israel each year, by loan guarantees and political support and UN vetoes offered without precondition. (The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has recently begun constructing another massive Wall, this one on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt). There’s a direct corporate connection, as well. Elbit Systems, an Israeli company that produces surveillance and military equipment, is responsible for much of the detection equipment on the West Bank Wall and has half of the contract on the Border Wall.
Elbit, by the way, is one example of the way that people power continues to exert itself against the power of Walls. Elbit’s role in the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank has made it the target of international divestment campaigns. In response to a call from Palestinian civil society groups, human rights advocates around the world have spoken out—and acted out—against companies that profit from the ongoing conflict over and occupation of Palestinian land. The Palestinian Christian community has issued a Kairos call for churches around the world to join in these and efforts. Recently, a Norwegian government pension fund, a Danish bank, and a Danish pension fund have pulled millions of dollars in investments from Elbit because of the company's violations of international law and human rights. Divestment campaigns in the United States, including in many churches and college campuses, are targeting Elbit and creating alliances with groups working for the rights of migrants. Campaigns like these begin to expose the cracks in the seemingly monolithic Walls that divide us—cracks that we can get our fingers in, to steady us or to climb up or to pull down.
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Walls, to me, have become so symbolic of what it is that we are struggling against, of the break down of the community we are called to, our inability to cross borders and barriers and find common ground.
What we are up against is separation—separation of so many kinds. The Dividing Walls of the world literally separate us from our neighbors, entrenching the divisions of economic or political apartheid. Our own personal struggles and alienation make us feel separated—from each other, from God’s infinite and incredible love for us.
Those of us who have taken the first stumbling steps in the prophetic walk toward justice and peace are up against separation, too. So often we get caught up in the narrow lanes of “issues” or “causes,” missing the Beloved Community created by our common struggle. There’s an organization called Jobs With Justice that asks supporters to take a pledge to show up, five times a year, for someone else’s struggle—for a cause or an issue that is not “my own.”
The only tool we have to dismantle the Walls that separate us is our collective imagination, that Spirit that invites us to create communities across dividing lines. It is exactly this collective imagination, unrestricted by borders, that we see in the Palestinian villages of Bil’in, Jayyous, and so many others, where Palestinian communities invite Israeli and international human rights defenders to join them in their nonviolent struggle against the Wall, and to take the message of justice back to their governments and to the corporations behind the construction of separation. It is this collective imagination that our OnFire group experienced when we spoke to Lupe Serrano at the Wall in Nogales, and he showed us the art that he and others have created on the Wall—something that is not allowed on the U.S. side—in a prophetic refusal to be contained. It is this collective imagination that we see as people of faith and hope join hands across borders and issues and identity groups, join hands and feet and voices in the great global uprising of people’s movements dedicated to justice, peace, and a more equitable sharing of the resources of this incredible world.
(Me with some of Lupe Serrano's art on the Wall in Nogales)
What we are up against is separation. But separation, as powerful as it is, is remarkably susceptible to the steady, patient work of the candle-lighters and the border-crossers and the Wall-defiers.
We can build very tall Walls and very long Walls and very deep Walls. The Wall that is being built on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is deep enough to cut off tunnels that are the only means of commerce for the Palestinians in Gaza. The Wall that is being built on our southern border will supposedly be able to stop the wave of migration brought about by severe economic inequality. The Wall that the Israeli government builds in Palestine is supposed to be so high and so long that it will somehow be able to contain the anger of people who have been denied their freedom and their rights and their land.
But no matter how tall and how long and how deep we build these Walls, cracks begin to appear. Cracks that light can shine through. Cracks that voices can whisper through. Cracks that are big enough for our fingers, for our hands, for holding and for pulling and for climbing.
(A group of Palestinians from the village of Ni'lin pull down a section of the Wall on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in November. They are met with tear gas fired by the Israeli military)
Together, we will pull down these walls. And imagine, just imagine, what beautiful things we can build instead with the leftover reminders of our former separation.
David Hosey is a mission intern with Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church. From September 2007-December 2008 he worked with the Sabeel Ecumencial Liberation Theology Center, a Palestinian Christian organization based in Jerusalem. During that time he was blessed with the opportunity to meet, learn from, and walk alongside Palestinian Christians and Muslims, Israeli Jews, and international human rights defenders struggling for justice, peace, and reconciliation. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he serves as the National Media & Coalition Coordinator for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a national coalition of more than 325 organizations working to change those U.S. policies toward Israel/Palestine that violate international law, human rights, and the principle of equality for all. He blogs (regularly) at the End the Occupation Blog and (more sporadically than he'd like) at City Of...
It’s a cold and rainy November morning. I’m up as usual at 6:30 a.m., out the door shortly after 8:00. Overnight, a wintry chill has moved in. Though I’m dressed warmly, my un-gloved hands are numb before I’m halfway to the Metro station. I can’t very well get to my pockets as I manage an umbrella in one hand and my lunch in the other—leftovers from last night’s dinner. On this near-icy day I’ll be able to enjoy a warm midday meal of spaghetti and meatballs—comfort food, in the psychological sense. Physically, I’ll be plenty comfortable at my desk in a heated office, sitting in a cushioned swivel chair with lumbar support. Comfort food for what discomfort?
At the same moment that I’m becoming conscious of my numbing fingertips, my eyes fall upon three figures in the distance. Two, like me, are huddled under umbrellas. The one in the center has his hands in the pocket of a hooded gray jacket and is shuffling back and forth in front of the Home Depot sign. Like me, these men are halfway to work; unlike me, they don’t know where they’re going, if anywhere. Their job “security” involves waiting in a parking lot, hoping that someone will need a hand with a home improvement project they’re tackling this Veterans’ Day.
As I continue on my way to the Metro, the parable of the laborers in the vineyard comes to mind for the hundredth time since moving to this Washington, D.C. neighborhood. How I long to be able to come home on a day like today and play the role of the compassionate owner—rewarding a full day’s wages to all of those seeking work. My head tells me that such charity is unsustainable, that what needs to be addressed and dismantled are the systems of injustice that allow this 2,000-year-old parable to have contemporary relevance. It is for that very reason that I’ve been so vocal in promoting immigration reform, health care reform, and an end to wage theft. But in this moment my righteous anger falls to the wayside. My heart breaks as I sense what can only be a small fraction of their vulnerability, a feeling that echoes an experience I had two weeks earlier in a completely different world.
2,500 miles from my northeast D.C. home lies the once-sleepy town of Altar, Mexico. The mass migration occurring over the past twenty-five years has brought a whirl of activity to the area. People from throughout Central America are passing through; some are on their first journey to the United States, but for many, the trek through the desert has become all too commonplace. During our visit* to Altar, I spent the night at a small migrant shelter run by a Catholic congregation. For no cost, sojourners can get a warm supper, a place to sleep and bathe, a change of clothes if need be, and a warm breakfast for up to three nights, though extensions are granted under extenuating circumstances.
Those seeking refuge at CCAMYN (Centre Comunitario de Atención al Migrante y Necesitado, or the Attention Center for Migrants and those in Need), however, are rarely first-time travelers. Most have already been deported from the United States—some multiple times over—and know about the shelter only because it’s not their first time traveling through the region. Migrants on their first journey are more likely to seek assistance from coyotes, guides who will see them at least part of the way to the border, but who are also likely to exploit, rob, or even physically harm the migrants—who often spend nearly all, if not everything, they have on the journey. In many cases, migrants cannot afford to pay the full price of a coyote, and must agree to pay off the debt for years to come, once they’ve crossed the border.
During dinner at CCAMYN, I found myself sitting next to Juan. He couldn’t have been that much older than I am, but the thousands of miles separating our birthplaces have taken their toll. I’ve spent the past five years on the move—mostly traveling to, from and within Europe—accessing countless destinations with the click of a mouse. Juan has spent the better part of the last ten years trying repeatedly to reach my place of departure. Temporary success has been his at least a dozen times, but that night he was on the road again. He has family in the States now, and they’re there “legally.” But he cannot risk seeing his own nieces out of fear that his sister might be charged with “harboring.” His hope is to cross and lay low for a few months; maybe then he can figure out a way to spend Christmas with the only family he has.
Juan was the first to push back from the large table where about thirty of us had eaten. The inches between us became miles again, as he embarked—under the cover of darkness—on a journey I’d have no trouble making in broad daylight two days later. Neither would I have any trouble boarding a plane to fly me back across the country to our nation’s capital.
Weeks have passed since I spent a night on CCAMYN’s tile floor. Back in the office, I heat up my leftovers and recline in my chair, watching the rain. I wonder where Juan is, whether the laborers have landed a job today, when the policymakers in the buildings outside my window will respond to the widespread, highly-organized advocacy efforts surrounding immigration reform. I wonder if members of my own family, congregation, and circle of friends will be ready to hear the stories of my trip to the border without writing me off for being “partisan,” or naïve to the “complexities” surrounding the situation. But what is so complicated about the desire of parents to feed their children, of young adults to seek a better life for themselves, of people of faith to advocate for those on the margins and in the shadows?
I put down my empty dish and sink answerless into my chair. It’s not as if these questions haven’t entered into the debate before, so what is to be done? I remember the feeling that rose in my chest as I observed the day laborers that morning: the horrific heartbreak, the longing for an outpouring of compassion, the urgency for justice to be realized on earth. But a glance at my inbox tells me that I’m not the only one experiencing this urgency. Articles, reports, action alerts, prayer requests, invitations to conference calls and prayer vigils—a whole movement is at my fingertips. I push back my plate, sit up, roll in my chair, and reach for the mouse, returning to the vineyard where new laborers are always welcome.
*In late October I traveled with a 10-member OnFire team to the US-Mexico border. We participated in a 3-day border justice immersion experience through the popular education organization BorderLinks. OnFire is a network of young adults within the Methodist Federation for Social Action, a national grassroots organization that promotes social justice in and beyond the United Methodist Church.
The brilliant color throughout the cultural center to celebrate El Día de los Muertos certainly clashed with my middle-class, white USAmerican understanding of death. My mother has taught me to think of funerals as a celebration of life, but the reality of drab, icy funeral homes did not reflect this idea of celebration. Skeletons dressed to the nines, colorful paper strung from the ceilings, altars lovingly decorated. But here, to encounter death with such vibrancy seems the only way to cope with living on the border. For so many people in Nogales, Sonore, Mexico and Arizona, USA, living on the border is a constant encounter with death.
We met with a group of high schoolers and introduced ourselves by going around in a circle saying our names and what the word border/frontera meant to us. As USAmericans, we spoke of separation, of walls, of discrimination. Certainly true, but also in our cases very abstract words. For the Mexican high school students--- fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year olds--- the word frontera means death. A few said that the border meant “my life” or “culture” but overwhelmingly, “death.” The border is a violence--- a physical, emotional, spiritual violence.
We journeyed to Altar, a town that for many is the beginning of the final leg of the journey to the USA, the place where guides are contacted and preparations are made to cross the desert. Here, we stayed at a migrant shelter. Before dinner, we shared songs to welcome tired souls as people came in. We met Pedro, a man in Altar looking for money to buy a prosthetic leg as his old prosthetic was splitting. He said he needed the leg so he could work harder. We met José, an eighteen year old, small, quiet, who sang softly along with us even when he didn't know the words. We met Juan, who came for dinner but did not stay the night as he was going to begin to cross the desert that night. He told us he had been deported fifteen times. What kind of desperation is it that someone who had been deported fifteen times would be getting ready to again cross the desert?
And then, of course, there is the wall, cutting through Nogales. Lupe Serrano, who had installed many pieces of art along the wall, told us that it was illegal to put art on the side of the wall facing the U.S.A. I was immediately struck by this having visited the remnants of the wall in Berlin last year. On the western side of the Berlin wall, graffiti calling for the destruction of the wall. On the east, nothing. The Soviet guards did not permit people to get that close to the eastern side of the wall alive for fear of escape. And the U.S.A. was so adamant about tearing down the wall; forgetfulness is a blessing for governments who are more concerned about profits than people.
And so we come to our part as characters in this story. Ours is a ministry of making present by naming. When confronted with the question “Now what?” our response is to make present by naming. Our response is to speak of the high school students, of migrants like José, Pedro, and Juan, of justice workers like Ceci and Susanna who led us on this trip. To speak of that pain of families ripped from their lands, of communities divided by the horror of a Wall. And to name ourselves and our governments as culprits. To say human beings deserve better than the choice to die in the struggle or to die of hunger. Deserve better than to leave their home to become expendable labor in a rich [white] society. We must educate ourselves. We must act to educate our communities, to reach out to immigrants outside of our communities, to demand change from our government. In the words of the women who volunteer at the migrant shelter in Altar, we must bring the gospel to life.
Greetings OnFire members! I’m writing today to inform you of an exciting opportunity to travel to the US-Mexico border for a short immersion trip from October 28-31st. We will be working with BorderLinks for an educational and interactive experience at the border: learning, sharing and serving to bring about positive social transformation in the areas of migration and immigration.
We will meet in Phoenix and drive to the BorderLinks facility in Tuscon, AZ, on Wednesday, October 28th. BorderLinks will prepare an itinerary for us that will include activities such as visiting and serving at aid stations, hearing from persons working to document human rights abuses, visiting with immigrants and their families, learning about labor practices in factories along the border, advocacy training in migrant rights.
The cost of the programming including lodging and food is $200, plus the cost of travel to and from Phoenix. [OnFire will provide transportation from Phoenix to Tuscon, where BorderLinks is located.] This includes a $100 scholarship from the Methodist Federation for Social Action. We will gladly help interested young people with fund raising ideas.
We would like to have a committed group of 10-13 people attend this event. The trip is open to any and all young adults who are interested in connecting their faith to issues of immigration and border justice. If you’re interested, please contact Jennifer Mihok at jennifer.mihok@gmail.com for more information and registration materials.
Here’s a bit more information about BorderLinks:
BorderLinks is an international leader in experiential education that raises awareness and inspires action around global political economics. BorderLinks grew out of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980’s when faith communities, universities, and other organizations rallied to advocate on behalf of thousands of refugees fleeing persecution in Central America. Today, BorderLinks’ educational programs focus on issues of immigration, community formation, development, and social justice in the borderlands between Mexico, the U.S and beyond. As a bi-national organization, BorderLinks brings people together to build bridges of solidarity across North and Latin American borders and promote intercultural understanding and respect. For more information, visit www.borderlinks.org.
“We have voices and power, and we are here to say we want this to be a fair and just system that treats people with dignity and respect,” said David Hosey, who attends Dumbarton UMC in Washington. He is a mission intern with the General Board of Global Ministries.
Hames, who came here from Sierra Leone 20 years ago, endured her struggles with the inefficient, expensive immigration legal system before finally receiving her green card just this year.
